In food and drink manufacturing, a safety barrier has to do two things well. It needs to protect people from FLT and MHE movements, and it cannot become a hygiene liability in the process.
That sounds straightforward. In practice, it's a challenge. The specifications that suit a general warehouse often fall short in a food production environment. Materials corrode. Fixings trap bacteria. Surfaces become impossible to clean to the standards your auditors expect.
If you're responsible for safety in a food and beverage facility, this guide covers the key considerations for choosing barriers that satisfy both demands: pedestrian protection and hygiene compliance.
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In a standard warehouse, the primary question is whether a barrier will absorb an FLT impact and stay in place. That matters everywhere, but in food and drink production, a second layer of risk exists.
Rust particles. Flaking paint. Standing water in hollow sections. Bacterial accumulation in crevices around floor fixings. Each can become a product contamination risk. In a sector where a single contamination event can trigger a full production shutdown, a product recall, or a failed BRC audit, the consequences reach well beyond a maintenance bill.
Most facilities are managing two regulatory frameworks simultaneously. The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 require employers to ensure adequate separation between pedestrian routes and vehicle traffic. The Food Safety Act 1990, reinforced by the Food Hygiene (England) Regulations 2006, requires food business operators to manage contamination risks across their sites. A safety barrier that corrodes or harbours bacteria is a compliance risk under both.
The legal baseline for pedestrian segregation comes from the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992. These require employers to organise traffic routes so that pedestrians and vehicles can circulate safely, with physical separation where FLTs, pallet trucks, or other MHE operate in close proximity to people.
PAS 13:2017 is the British standard for workplace safety barriers in traffic management environments. It provides the testing and performance framework for assessing whether a barrier will protect people under impact. Products tested to this standard have documented performance data that holds up to scrutiny during audits.
In a food environment, HSE's workplace transport guidance (HSG136) applies alongside food safety legislation. An auditor visiting your site may assess compliance with both sets of requirements. Having a barrier system that satisfies both frameworks, safe under impact, cleanable to food hygiene standards, removes the need to manage competing obligations.
Steel barriers have a long track record in industrial environments. In food manufacturing, they are a difficult choice.
Standard mild steel corrodes when exposed to moisture, cleaning chemicals, and temperature variation, all conditions that are routine in food production. Even galvanised or powder-coated steel will eventually fail in wash-down areas: coatings chip, and the substrate corrodes beneath. Once rust develops, cleaning back to a food-safe standard becomes effectively impossible. Flaking coatings then become physical contamination hazards in their own right.
Polymer barriers behave differently. Made from modified PVC, they don't corrode, don't absorb moisture, and don't shed particles. The surface is non-porous, which means bacteria cannot penetrate the material, and cleaning back to a hygienic state is a manageable, repeatable process.
For food and drink facilities, this isn't an abstract advantage. It's the difference between a barrier that passes your next BRC audit and one that generates a finding.
Explore Clarity's polymer safety barriers
This is where facilities managers often encounter a problem they didn't anticipate at the procurement stage.
Mechanical fixings (anchor bolts driven through the floor) create gaps between the barrier base and the floor surface. In a production environment with regular wet cleaning, those gaps collect liquid, product debris, and bacteria. They're difficult to clean effectively, and the problem compounds over time.
When we worked with Unilever's Gloucester site, the existing barrier system relied on mechanical fixings that were allowing water ingress into a food-rated production area. The solution involved transitioning to a chemical fixing approach, which eliminates the floor void entirely and creates a hygienic seal at the base of each barrier post.
The principle is worth understanding regardless of which supplier you're speaking with: even a well-specified barrier can create a hygiene problem if the fixing method isn't matched to the environment. It's worth raising this specifically before committing to any installation.
Production facilities in food and drink are cleaned frequently and aggressively. High-pressure water jets, industrial cleaning chemicals, sometimes daily cycles. A barrier system that can't withstand this deteriorates quickly and creates ongoing maintenance overhead.
The practical questions are these:
Polymer barriers address most of these concerns by design. There are no hollow sections that retain moisture, no coatings that chemicals can strip, and no structural degradation from repeated washing. The surface is smooth and non-porous.
That said, not all polymer barriers are equal. Some lower-specification products have joints, end caps, or fixing covers that don't lend themselves to thorough cleaning. Look for products with demonstrable hygiene credentials, and ask suppliers for documentation rather than taking marketing claims at face value.
Before committing to any barrier system for a food or drink production environment, these questions are worth raising with any supplier:
What material is the barrier made from, and how does it perform in wet, chemical-heavy environments? Ask for evidence, not assurances. Request test data for chemical resistance and surface integrity over time.
This question alone separates suppliers with food manufacturing experience from those without it. If a supplier doesn't know the answer quickly, that tells you something.
PAS 13 compliance is the baseline for any serious barrier specification. Third-party test certificates give you something to present to an auditor. Marketing language does not.
General warehouse experience and food manufacturing experience are not the same thing. The challenges are different enough that sector-specific knowledge matters during specification.
At Clarity, we start food and beverage projects with a site survey. We look at traffic patterns, pedestrian routes, floor conditions, and the cleaning regime before recommending any product. In food environments, fixing method and material selection are always part of that conversation. The survey fee is credited back against your project – so there is no financial risk in finding out exactly where your site stands.